communication education paper

kira

52 FINDING THE WHY: PERSONALIZING LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

able to apply at least some of what they are learning to some aspects of their lives they consider important, they are more likely to persist and be satisfied with their college experience.

The first three of these early college predictors of student success have received a fair amount of attention in the literature. And many if not most campuses have enacted policies, programs, and practices to address this trio of predictors. These interventions include learning communities, ser- vice learning courses, and first-year seminars, which—when implemented well—are among the 10 high-impact practices that are associated with per- sistence and learning (Kuh 2008); that is, students who participate in these programs are more engaged overall in the college experience and gain more from their studies (see also Kuh and O’Donnell 2013; Finley and McNair 2013). Moreover, while all students derive benefits from participating in high-impact practices, they seem to have a compensatory effect for students who are less well prepared academically or who are members of historically underserved groups; that is, the performance of such students seems to be greater as a result of the high-impact practice than what might be otherwise expected (Finley and McNair 2013).

It is difficult to directly and materially address the academic trajectory challenge without providing financial support that will enable students to attend college full-time. There are promising experiments underway, such as the new Guttman College in the CUNY system, where students are re- quired to attend full-time and receive sufficient financial, academic, and social support that makes it possible for them to participate in one or more high-impact practices. But such programs are rare, in large part because they are quite expensive.

As noted earlier, far less attention has been given to goal realization, which I consider to be a largely untapped but very promising area for in- terventions, especially those that combine classroom assignments with re- quired out-of-class applications.

Why Goal Realization Matters and What It Looks Like in Practice

As suggested earlier, goal realization is the ability of a student to articulate what he or she intends to get out of college and to make connections be- tween what he or she is learning inside and outside of class to priorities and activities that have value in the present moment. Unfortunately, the major- ity of undergraduates—especially but not only those matriculating imme- diately after high school—are not able to clarify in their mind’s eye, nor are they able to tell others in their own language what they hope to gain from college. Perhaps more important, they do not see and appreciate the rele- vance of what they are studying to things that matter in their lives. Keep in mind, too, that the vast majority of traditional-age students are in the

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dualistic stage of intellectual and cognitive development. That is, they tend to see information as either right or wrong; ambiguity and complexity are beyond their grasp. Thus, dualistic students tend to overlook or avoid con- cepts and experiences that are very difficult to comprehend; they eschew such circumstances and much prefer fairly simple, straightforward expla- nations and activities that have concrete applications to practical problems or situations.

Now, consider Suzanne who—as with most 18-year-olds—has dual- istic tendencies. In her first academic term, she is taking a world history lecture-oriented course focused on events in the seventeenth century. She apprehends nothing in the readings or material discussed in class so far— the emergence of the Scientific Revolution, China losing about 30 percent of its population during the Ming dynasty, and the early decades of the European colonization of North America—that is germane to her declared elementary education major or how she might apply this information to what she envisions a third-grade classroom will be like. She does not see how anything she has heard so far can help her make sense of her rela- tionship with her roommate or applies to her part-time food service job on campus. For Suzanne, the world history class as well as her philosophy and general science classes—also large lectures—are at best uninteresting and at worst confusing and irrelevant to the pressing priorities in her life. Class quizzes and papers seem to emphasize recall of facts without an underlying foundation of why this information does or should matter.

Of course, there are many first-year students who are more advanced than Suzanne in their cognitive and intellectual development. And for some of them, certain lecture classes stimulate their thinking in ways that begin to spark connections between history, philosophy, and psychology. But this kind of thinking—a form of metacognition if you will—is beyond Suzanne’s intellectual grasp at the moment. As a result, Suzanne is spending more time wondering if she belongs in college. After all, no one else in her family has a college degree. Indeed, she’s the first one to even take college courses! Not only is Suzanne unable to find meaning in or use in a practical way anything she is supposed to be learning, staying in school is expensive and getting more so. Maybe, she thinks, it is time to accept the fact that she is not college material; perhaps she should cut her losses, leave school, and find a job before she takes on even more loan debt.

Kari could be Suzanne’s identical twin, at least so far as her intellectual and cognitive development are concerned. She’s also the first in her low- income family to go to college. It was a scary proposition to take this costly step. But after a few shaky weeks of uncertainty, Kari is now beginning to better understand what is expected of her and what she needs to do to suc- ceed. Equally important, she has found—or more accurately—her small 22- student first-year seminar class has placed her in situations where she has had to demonstrate and use what she is learning, not only in the classroom but outside of class as well. The seminar is organized around the theme

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING • DOI: 10.1002/tl

54 FINDING THE WHY: PERSONALIZING LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

of sustainability. As with all her other classes this first academic term, this seminar is part of the required general education component and happens to be taught by a faculty member from the English department. Like most other first-year seminars at her school, hers is writing intensive, in that four short papers are required, and each can be revised based on peer review and feedback from the instructor and the upper-division peer mentor assigned to the class. After what first appeared to Kari to be a lot of work (she did not write four papers her entire senior year of high school!), she already has noticed that her writing has improved and she is only halfway through the academic term. Moreover, the writing assignments are intentionally de- signed so that Kari has to apply at least three concepts introduced either from recent class readings or discussions to some aspect of sustainability efforts on campus, either underway or perceived by Kari to be needed in the near term. This kind of assignment required Kari to apply concepts— some of which are theoretical—to a concrete problem in a setting she is coming to know fairly well.

Kari also has the additional advantage of working at the welcome desk in the campus union, which is helping her see the relevance of what she is learning. Already, she has met twice with her supervisor, the associate director of the union, along with five other undergraduates, to discuss how they are applying what they are learning in their union jobs to their classes. And the discussion has already taken an opposite turn, so that she and her coworkers were asked to think about what she is learning in her classes that she can use on the job. At first, Kari was nonplussed. She had never before thought about the possible relationships between these different aspects of her life, let alone had to think aloud how her studies were informing what she did on her job and vice versa. But as her embarrassment subsided and she heard other students offer personal stories, Kari too began to see how, for example, giving feedback on a peer’s first-year seminar paper helped boost her confidence in her information desk role when responding to people asking questions about the campus.

Applying some of what she is learning in her first-year seminar is be- ginning to change the way she approaches her other classes, all but one of which are large lecture courses. That is, she now understands that part of being a good learner is figuring out how information can be used in dif- ferent situations. At the same time, Kari is developing a deeper capacity for thinking about her thinking and what she is learning, connecting her learn- ing experiences inside and outside of class, and transferring the meaning of these connections to other aspects of her life. And by discussing these ex- periences with her teachers, work supervisors, and peers, Kari is getting practice at how to describe her learning and what she can do with it, which will be invaluable when interviewing for subsequent jobs on campus and after college. Moreover, Kari sees value in what she is learning and how it can help her realize her ambition of being the first in her family to earn a college degree and become a schoolteacher. She no longer wonders whether

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she has the right stuff to be in college. Indeed, Kari is beginning to use her mind in ways that are both rewarding and exciting.

Final Words

To my knowledge, no one has estimated the number of students who leave college prematurely because they were unable to find concrete, personally meaningful ways to apply at least some of what they are studying to their current situation and anticipated post-college lives. But many faculty and staff in colleges and universities—especially academic advisors—are famil- iar with something akin to Suzanne’s experience. Of course, many students like Suzanne summon the fortitude to stay in school. But imagine how many more students would continue their studies and deepen their learning in meaningful ways if they had one or more classes in their first college year and later that were structured like Kari’s.

As Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) pointed out, postsecondary insti- tutions must enact a variety of policies, programs, and practices to engage students more fully in educationally purposeful activities in order to help them succeed and enrich their learning. A laser-like focus on addressing goal realization is one of the few promising approaches that do not require additional resources to implement. Teaching and learning centers can begin immediately to include goal realization strategies in course redesign work- shops and other faculty development activities. Student employment of- fices and other campus partners, such as student affairs departments, can do their part by initiating structured supervisor–student worker conversa- tions about the connections between academics and job experiences, sim- ilar to the Guided Reflection on Work initiative at the University of Iowa (http://vp.studentlife.uiowa.edu/initiatives/grow/). Academic advisors also can play a key role by encouraging students to take part in high-impact practices that are often rich with activities that induce students to apply what they are learning to the kinds of unscripted problems they will surely face in the future.

When all is said and done, every college graduate today needs to demonstrate the capacity to reflect on experiences in and out of the class- room, to connect what they are learning from different courses, out-of-class experiences, and life beyond the institution, and to transfer and use what he or she has learned in different settings that present novel challenges and opportunities. Goal realization is a necessary condition toward these im- portant ends.

References

Finley, A. and T. McNair. 2013. Assessing Underserved Students’ Engagement in High- Impact Practices. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING • DOI: 10.1002/tl